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RK: It definitely is. When you start seeing developers setting up distribution portals of their own, when there's this amazing, burgeoning low-level indie scene, when garage games are high end technology, we start seeing that burst of stuff. When we think of indie games, we think of stuff in the Independent Games Festival, but frankly stuff in the IGF is amazingly gorgeous. The stuff that I see hanging out down low. There are unbelievable things that are being done in Basic and in Flash. We're talking thousands of games. Where does something like the One Laptop per Child program fit into all this? They’re going to be giving open-source technology to kids around the world and encouraging them to program. RK: The one thing the web makes sure of is that there are enough content creators to make any given content creator irrelevant, or superfluous at any rate. Even something you might slave over endlessly and put your best professional energy into, some guy off the street is going to trump you. We saw that happen with Geometry Wars. That came out, and then within 48 hours we started seeing the clones, and a couple of the clones I played were better. It's like, “Hmm, that didn't take long.” The other thing is, I think we're having our lunch eaten from outside. MTV launched more MMOs in the last six months than any of the major MMO companies. What the hell is that about? Plush toy MMOs. Where is that coming from? You look at all the recent announcements for MMOs, and it's like, “Wait a minute, every one of them is a media licence.” Which is the tail and which is the dog here? What does it mean when these guys come in? When MTV went to make Virtual Laguna Beach, they didn't hire people from the games industry, and yet they had a lot of success. They had a better launch then Dungeons and Dragons Online, and on top of that, they're doing stuff we only wish we could do. They stream the TV episodes in the worlds before they come out on TV. I think big media will screw it up a lot, but they have effectively infinitely deep pockets. It's because they know that their territory is going away, so they're going to crowd into ours. They think that they can take it away from us, and they may be right.
What were your thoughts on Sony’s Home? RK: I missed the keynote, so all I've seen is YouTube. I think it looks really pretty, in a way that the current social worlds don't. It struck me as being still very much a big media play. Besides that, it looks very closed in terms of what it does. I’ve been watching the reaction from the kind of virtual world, metaverse type people. They all say, “Second Life!” I don't think of this as Second Life. I don't think it's that at all. It looks like a controlled, closed environment. To me that's very different. It'll be interesting to see how that goes, because I think within the big companies themselves there are conflicting goals and desires. How do you reach out to the web and the new stuff while still maintaining control? So where does Areae fit into all this? RK: On our site we say what we're trying to do is marry MMOs and Web 2.0, and we mean that pretty literally. Plus, we're looking to be deploying much sooner than everybody thinks, hopefully before the end of the year. I hope we’ll bring together the best of both worlds, but you'll have to wait another month or two to know more. |
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